Episodes

Episodes has so much going for it. It's co-written by David Crane, the clever writer mainly responsible for Friends! It has Joey from Friends in the shape of Matt LeBlanc playing himself, Matt, as an older, greyer and slappably unwiser version of Joey from Friends! It has Tamsin Greig! And Kathleen Rose Perkins! And it's really underwhelming!

Part of the problem must be that, while we Brits relished every last drop of the earlier battles surrounding the fictional couple Tamsin and Stephen Mangan's sharp fictional script being dumbed down for America, the real US scriptwriters might now feel a touch of possibly justifiable unease at all the shrewd Briton/whalethick Statesider gags. And thus have to concentrate on affairs, and Matt/Joey's vaulting new stupidities. But it's a fresh series, and I'll let it settle in, and admittedly Mr Mangan's facial reactions to Matt's financial woes last week - turned out he'd been scammed for half his lifetime earnings, and thus had "just" $31m left - were as pricelessly and stoically old-country as old maids cycling through the morning mists on cheap and broken bikes.

Episodes, the comedy in which Matt LeBlanc plays Matt LeBlanc in a TV show about making a TV show, began its fourth series this week. Television has been making shows about making shows for many years, with mixed success. The problem, as with actors talking about acting, is that people at home tend not to consider television to be quite as important as the people who make it. Most of us worry more about running out of rinse aid.

Episodes adds another layer of meta by having Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig playing two British screenwriters trying to make sense of the American way of making a TV show. The joke has evolved over four years to the point where by now they all know that the sitcom they are making is godawful, and yet for reasons to do with executive-level willy-waving the show goes on. Episodes is by no means godawful - Mangan and Greig are two of our very best comic performers - but it does sail a little close to the wind in telling a story about a sitcom that's outstayed its welcome.

The problem is that Episodes has got a little too cosy. When it began "Matt LeBlanc" was about as likeable as Eugene Terre'Blanche, and the jokes at his expense had teeth. But four series in, that near-the-knuckle humour has lost its bite. LeBlanc has become essentially a nice guy with a few quirks. The show isn't roasting him, as they like to say in America. It's barely even searing him - in fact, his appearance starts to look like the kind of self-deprecation that's actually a little affected - it's the same borderline smugness you sometimes sense is the driving force behind W1A.

They've escaped. With Pucks! cancelled, scriptwriters Beverly and Sean are back in London. Except their "shitty sitcom no one watched" has, somehow, been renewed and the duo find themselves back in LA with a version of Matt LeBlanc still phoning in his Joey-from-Friends persona. Thus season four of the telly-about-telly series begins, and it's good to have it back because it's sharply written and funny. Tonight, Matt gets bad financial news. Beverly: "You can have a very nice life, even with as little as $31m."

Radio Times review

Sean and Beverly's terrible Pucks!, which stars Matt LeBlanc's ghastly alter-ego, has risen from the dead - "like Jesus if Jesus was a s****y sitcom" says one character. Some people might think Episodes itself should have been put out of its misery a while back. But Friends stalwart and co-writer David Crane has managed to breathe more life into a comedy that is as much a wry look at transatlantic foibles as Crane's satire/revenge on the industry he (and co-scribe and real-life partner Jeffrey Klarik) know all too well.

Some of the lines feel a little ponderous in places but many are brilliant. And the chemistry between Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig's exasperated Brits and LeBlanc's desperately shallow but oddly likeable leading man keep this singing.

Episodes, series 4, episode 1, review: 'not funny'

The only relief came from Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan in the return of Episodes, says Tom Rowley.

Episodes review

"As much a wry look at US/Brit foibles as an in-joke TV industry satire"

10 things we learnt from Matt LeBlanc about Episodes

Some information about the latest series of Episodes.

Stephen Mangan reveals run in with Hollywood cops

Episodes star Stephen Mangan has revealed he feared he was about to be arrested in Los Angeles - but the police were just stopping him to say they loved the show.

Series 4 preview

The script doesn't rely on outrageous situations, funny one-liners or madcap characters to bring the comedy. Instead we're invited into a world that feels very real, and it's the chemistry between the characters and the decisions they make that draws out the comedy and the more we get to know the characters, the more we're drawn in.

TV preview, Episodes, BBC2

If the fictional Pucks! script is dodgy, the Episodes script by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik is well up to scratch, littered with screwball banter and anti-PC jokes.